Ad stalking defense

Abstract

Techniques are described to mitigate ad stalking and other user concerns resulting from user-targeted advertising. A user may be informed of advertising information by a process in which an advertising server receives a request for an ad. The request may have been generated in response to a user request for a landing web page. An ad may be selected based on user information available to the advertising server, where the user information is associated with the user and describes behavior and/or attributes and/or preferences associated with the user. Text about how the ad was selected may be incorporated into the ad. Such text may describe the user information used to select the ad. The selection-disclosing text may be incorporated in the ad in a form that is displayable to the user by a browser. The ad may then be transmitted for display in the landing web page.

1 . A method performed by one or more computers to inform a user of advertising information, the method comprising:
 receiving a request for an ad, the request having been generated in response to a user request for a landing web page;   selecting an ad based on user information, where the user information is associated with the user and describes behavior and/or attributes and/or preferences associated with the user;   incorporating selection-disclosing information into the ad, the selection-disclosing information comprising information about how the ad was selected, the selection-disclosing information incorporated in the ad in a form that is displayable to the user; and   transmitting the ad with the incorporated selection-disclosing text for display in the landing web page.   
     
     
         2 . A method according to  claim 1 , further comprising displaying the ad at a browser and responding to user interaction with the ad or the landing page by displaying the selection-disclosing text. 
     
     
         3 . A method according to  claim 2 , wherein the user interaction comprises moving a pointer over the ad or clicking the ad. 
     
     
         4 . A method according to  claim 1 , wherein the selecting comprises accessing a database of previously stored user profiles, selecting therefrom a user profile associated with the user, the user information comprising the user profile, and the information about how the ad was selected comprises one or more attributes of the selected user profile. 
     
     
         5 . A method according to  claim 4 , the selecting further comprising matching keywords or categories submitted by an advertising entity that corresponds to the ad, and the selection-disclosing text identifying at least some of the keywords or categories. 
     
     
         6 . A method according to  claim 5 , wherein when the ad is interacted with by the user using the browser, text describing at least some of the keywords or categories is displayed by the browser. 
     
     
         7 . One or more computer-readable storage media storing information to enable one or more computers to perform a process, the process comprising:
 generating an interactive browser-displayable ad by including therein code that causes a browser to, when the ad is displayed by the browser and interacted with by a user via the browser, display information to the user about how the ad was selected for display to the user.   
     
     
         8 . One or more computer-readable storage media according to  claim 7 , wherein the information describes attributes or behaviors or keywords associated with the user and/or associated with the ad that were used as a basis to match the ad to the user. 
     
     
         9 . One or more computer-readable storage media according to  claim 7 , wherein the ad was selected by matching a user profile corresponding to the user. 
     
     
         10 . One or more computer-readable storage media according to  claim 9 , wherein the user profile comprises attributes or behaviors derived from web tracking data comprised of records of visits of the user to different web pages and linked to the user by a cookie-based user identifier. 
     
     
         11 . One or more computer-readable storage media according to  claim 7 , wherein the source code comprises a text field that corresponds to a property of the ad or of a portion of a page displayed by the browser, the page containing the ad, wherein when the user interacts with the ad displayed in the browser, the text field of the property causes the information indicating how the ad was selected to be displayed by the browser. 
     
     
         12 . One or more computer-readable storage media according to  claim 7 , wherein the generating is performed by an ad generating module on a same computer that is executing the browser. 
     
     
         13 . One or more computer-readable storage media according to  claim 7 , further comprising responding, at the browser, to user interaction with the ad, by displaying a new page in the browser, and performing a click-through of the ad when the user inputs approval via the new web page. 
     
     
         14 . One or more computer-readable storage media according to  claim 7 , wherein information to be displayed comprises a message indicating information about the user that was used to select the ad. 
     
     
         15 . A method performed by a computer running a browser, the computer comprised of processor(s) and memory, the method comprising:
 executing the browser on the computer;   receiving from a server via a network an ad to be displayed by the browser; and   in response to a user interacting with the ad displayed by the browser, displaying information indicating a basis by which the ad was selected to be displayed to the user.   
     
     
         16 . A method according to  claim 15 , wherein the basis comprises information about the user, and the information displayed comprises text describing the information about the user. 
     
     
         17 . A method according to  claim 15 , further comprising adding the information to the ad by determining whether the basis by which the ad was selected defined a set of users of a size below a threshold. 
     
     
         18 . A method according to  claim 15 , further comprising adding the information to the ad by determining whether the basis by which the ad was selected included predefined user attributes or behaviors. 
     
     
         19 . A method according to  claim 15 , wherein the ad was selected by the accessing of a user profile compiled by linking web sites previously visited by the user, and the user profile was selected by an ad server searching a database of profiles for profiles fitting a profile definition, the basis comprising the profile definition. 
     
     
         20 . A method according to  claim 19 , wherein the information indicating the basis by which the ad was selected is added to the ad based on a decision made by the ad server.